Angelology (50 page)

Gabriella turned off the highway and drove onto a small country road. She stretched, arching her back like a cat. “We need to get gas,” she said, scanning the road for a place to stop. Rounding a bend, Verlaine spotted a twenty-four-hour gas station. Gabriella pulled off the road and parked alongside a pump. She didn’t object when he offered to fill the car, telling him to be sure to use premium.

As Verlaine had paid for the gas, he stood gazing over the neat rows of merchandise inside the station—the bottles of soda, the packaged food, the orderly array of magazines—remarking how simple life could be. Only yesterday he would not have thought much of the creature comforts of a gasstation convenience store. He would have been too annoyed by the long line and neon lights to actually look around. Now he felt a perverse admiration for anything that offered such safe familiarity. He added a pack of cigarettes to the tally and returned to the car.

Outside, Gabriella waited in the driver’s seat. Verlaine took the passenger side and gave Gabriella the pack of cigarettes. She accepted them with a terse smile, but he could see that the gesture pleased her. Then, without waiting another moment, she threw the car into gear and drove onto the small country highway.

Verlaine unwrapped the pack of cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it for Gabriella. She rolled the window down a crack, the cigarette smoke dispersing in a stream of fresh air. “You don’t seem to be afraid, but I know that what I told you must have some effect upon you.”

“I’m still working on getting my mind around it all,” Verlaine replied, thinking, even as he spoke, that this was a huge understatement. In truth, he was baffled by what he’d learned. He couldn’t understand how she managed to stay so calm. Finally, he said, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” she asked, keeping her eye on the road.

“Live like this,” he replied. “As if nothing abnormal is happening. As if you’ve accepted it.”

Keeping her eyes on the road, Gabriella said, “I became part of this battle so long ago that I am hardened to it. It is impossible for me to remember what it is like to live without knowing. Discovering their existence is like being told the earth is round—it goes against everything one senses to be true. Yet it is reality. I cannot imagine what it is like to live without them haunting my thoughts, to wake in the morning and believe that we live in a just, free, equal world. I suppose I have adjusted my vision of the world to suit this reality. I see everything in white and black, good and evil. We are good, they are evil. If we are to live, they must die. There are those of us who believe in appeasement—that we can work out a way to live side by side—but many also believe we cannot rest until they have been exterminated.”

“I would think,” Verlaine said, surprised by the adamancy of Gabriella’s voice, “it would be more complicated than that”

“Of course, it is more complicated. There are reasons for my strong feelings. While I have been an angelologist all of my adult life, I have not always hated the Nephilim as I do today,” Gabriella said, her voice quiet, almost vulnerable. “I will tell you a story, one that very few have heard before. Perhaps it will help you to understand my extremism. Perhaps you will see why it is so important to me that every last one of them is killed.”

Gabriella tossed the cigarette out the window, lit another, her eyes trained upon the winding highway.

“In the second year of my schooling at the Angelological Society in Paris, I met the love of my life. This is not something I would have admitted at the time, nor would I have made this claim in middle age. But I am an old woman now—older than I look, as a matter of fact—and I can say with great certainty that I will never love again as I did in the summer of 1939. I was fifteen then, too young to fall in love, perhaps. Or maybe it is only then, with the dew of childhood still in my eyes, that I was capable of such love. I will never know, of course.”

Gabriella paused, as if weighing her words, and continued.

“I was a peculiar girl, to put it mildly. I was obsessed with my studies in the way that some become obsessed with riches or love or fame. I came from a family of wealthy angelologists—many of my relatives had trained in the academy. I was also inordinately competitive. Socializing with my peers was out of the question, and I thought nothing of working night and day in order to succeed. I wanted to be at the top of my class in every respect, and routinely I was at the top. By the second term of my first year, it was clear that there were only two students to have distinguished themselves—myself and a young woman named Celestine, a brilliant girl who later became a dear friend.”

Verlaine nearly choked. “Celestine?” he said. “Celestine Clochette who came to St. Rose Convent in 1943?”

“It was 1944,” Gabriella corrected. “But that is another story. This story begins one afternoon in April 1939, a chill, rainy afternoon, as April afternoons tend to be in Paris. The cobblestones veritably flooded over each spring with rain, filling the sewers and the gardens and the Seine. I remember the afternoon exactly. It was one o’clock, April seventh, a Friday. I had finished my morning classes and, as usual, ventured out to find something for lunch. What was
un
usual about this day was that I had forgotten my umbrella. As I was fastidious to a fault, it was a rare spring day when I found myself unprotected in a downpour. Yet this was the case. Upon walking out of the Athenaeum, I realized that I would be soaked to the bone, and the papers and books I carried under my arm would certainly have been ruined. And so I stood under the great portico of our school’s main entrance, watching the water fall.

“From out of the swirling deluge of rain, a man emerged with an enormous violet-colored umbrella, an unusual choice for a gentleman, I thought. I watched him saunter across the courtyard of the school, elegant, erect, and exceedingly good-looking. Perhaps it was the longing I felt for the hollow, dry sanctuary of the umbrella, but I stared at the stranger, hoping that he would come to me, as if I had the power to cast a spell upon him.

“Those were very different times. If it was unseemly for a woman to stare at a handsome gentleman, it was equally unseemly for him to ignore her. Only the most ill-mannered rake would leave a lady in the rain. He paused halfway through the courtyard, discovered that I was staring at him, turned sharply upon the heel of his leather boot, and came to my aid.

“He tipped his hat so that his great blue eyes met mine. He said, ‘May I take you safely through this torrent?’ His voice was filled with a buoyant, seductive, almost cruel confidence. This one look, this single phrase, was all that it took to win me.

“‘You may take me wherever you wish,’ I replied. Instantly aware of my indiscretion, I added, ‘Anything to get out of this terrible rain.’

“He asked me my name, and when I told him, I saw at once that the name pleased him. ‘Named after an angel?’

“‘The messenger of good news,’ I answered.

“He met my eyes and smiled, pleased with my quick response. His eyes were the coolest, most pellucid blue I had ever seen. The smile was a sweet, delicious smile, as if he knew the power he had over me. A few years later, when it was revealed that my uncle, Victor Lévi-Franche, had disgraced our family by working as a spy for this man, I wondered if his delight at my name was tied to my uncle’s position and not, as he suggested, its angelic provenance.

“He offered his hand and said, ‘Come, my messenger of good news, let us go.’ I gave him my hand. In that moment, with the first touch of his skin, the life I had been leading fell away and a new one began.

“He later introduced himself as Percival Grigori III.” Gabriella glanced at Verlaine, to catch his reaction.

“Not the same—” Verlaine said in disbelief.

“Yes,” Gabriella said. “One and the same. At the time I had no notion of who he was or what his family name meant. If only I had been older and had been exposed to more at the academy, I would have turned from him and run away. In my ignorance I was charmed.

“Under the great violet umbrella, we walked. He took my arm and led me through the narrow, flooding streets to a motorcar, a shiny Mercedes 500K Roadster, an amazing silver car that shone even in the rain. I don’t know if you admire automobiles, but this was a gorgeous machine, with all the luxuries available at the time—electric wipers and locks, opulent coach-work. My family owned a car—which was quite a luxury in itself—but I had never seen anything like Percival’s Mercedes. They were exceedingly rare. As a matter of fact, a prewar 500K was auctioned off a few years ago in London. I went to the event so that I could see the car again. It sold for seven hundred thousand pounds sterling.

“Percival opened the door with a grand gesture, as if placing me into a royal carriage. I sank into the soft seat, my wet skin sticking to the leather, and took a deep breath: The car smelled of cologne mixed with the slightest hint of cigarette smoke. A tortoiseshell dashboard gleamed with buttons and knobs, each one waiting to be pressed and turned, while a pair of leather driving gloves lay folded upon the dash, waiting for his hands to fill them. It was the most beautiful car I had seen in my life. Nestling deep into the seat, I was consumed by happiness.

“I remember quite vividly the feeling I had as he drove the Mercedes along the boulevard Saint-Michel and across the Île de la Cite, the rain falling with increased violence, as if it had been waiting for us to take shelter before releasing itself upon the spring flowers and green, receptive earth. The feeling, I believe, was fear, although at the time I told myself it was love. The danger Percival posed was not known to me. For all I could tell, he was just a young man who drove recklessly. I believe now that I feared him instinctively. Still, he had captured my heart without effort. I watched him, glancing at his lovely pale skin and his long, delicate fingers upon the gearshift. I couldn’t speak. Over the bridge he sped, and then onto the rue de Rivoli, the wipers swishing across the windshield, cutting a porthole through the water.

“‘Naturally I am taking you to lunch,’ he said, glancing at me as he slowed before a grand hotel off the place de la Concorde. ‘I see that you’re hungry.’

“‘And how can you see such a thing as hunger?’ I replied, challenging him, although he was correct: I had not eaten breakfast and was ravenous.

“‘I have a special talent,’ he said, taking the car out of gear, pulling the brake shaft, and peeling his leather driving gloves from his hands one by one. ‘I know exactly what you desire before you know yourself.’

“‘Then tell me,’ I demanded, hoping that he would find me bold and sophisticated, the very things I knew I was not. ‘What do I want most of all?’

“He studied me for a moment. I saw, as I had in the first seconds of our meeting, the fleeting, sensual cruelty behind his blue eyes. ‘A beautiful death,’ he said, so quietly I was not sure that I’d heard him correctly. With that he opened the door and slid out of the car.

“Before I had time to question this bizarre statement, he opened the passenger door, helped me from my seat, and we were walking arm in arm into the restaurant. Pausing at a gilded mirror, he shed his hat and coat, glancing about as if the fleet of waiters rushing to assist him were too slow for his taste. I watched the glass as his reflection moved, examining his profile, the beautifully cut suit of light gray gabardine that in the harsh clarity of the mirror appeared almost blue, an off rhyme of his eyes. His skin was deathly pale, nearly transparent, and yet this quality had the strange effect of making him more attractive, as if he were a precious object that had been kept from the sun.”

As he listened to Gabriella’s tale, Verlaine tried to reconcile her description with the Percival Grigori he had seen yesterday afternoon, but he could not. Clearly Gabriella did not speak of the sickly, decrepit man Verlaine knew, but rather of the man Percival Grigori had once been. Instead of questioning her, as he wished, Verlaine sat back and listened.

“Within seconds a waiter had taken our coats and was leading us into the dining room, a converted ballroom that opened upon a courtyard garden. All the while I could feel him glancing at me with intense interest, as if searching for my reaction.

“There was no question of menus or of ordering our dishes. Wineglasses were filled and plates arrived, as if everything had been arranged ahead of time. Of course Percival achieved his desired effect. My astonishment at it all was immense, although I tried to disguise it. While I had been sent to fine schools and had been raised in the bourgeois fashion of the city, I was quite aware that this man was beyond anything I had experienced. Looking over my clothes, I realized to my horror that I was wearing my school attire, a detail I had overlooked in the excitement of the drive. In addition to my drab clothing, my shoes were scuffed and I had forgotten my favorite perfume at my apartment.

“‘You’re blushing,’ he said. ‘Why?’

“I merely looked down at my pleated wool skirt and crisp white blouse, and he understood my dilemma.

“‘You are the loveliest creature here,’ he said, without a hint of irony. ‘You look like an angel.’

“‘I look exactly like what I am,’ I said, pride overruling all other emotions. ‘A schoolgirl dining with a wealthy older man.’

“‘I am not so much older than you,’ he said playfully.

“‘How much is not so much?’ I demanded. Although he appeared to be in his early twenties—an age that was not, as he rightly said, much older than mine—his manners and the confidence with which he carried himself seemed to belong to a man of great experience.

“‘I am more interested in you,’ he said, brushing away the question. ‘Tell me, do you enjoy your studies? I believe you must. I own apartments near your school, and I have seen you before. You always have the appearance of someone who has been in the library too long.’

“While it should have sent a warning that he had been aware of my existence before that day, it instead sent a ripple of pleasure through me. ‘You noticed me?’ I said, too eager for his attention.